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The All Consuming Race

While the preparations for the Boilermaker are a year-round event, the final thirty days are when race activities hit light speed. Some of it is structured, some is the unplanned but predicable and some; well some sort of comes out of nowhere and bonks you on the side of the head!
Time formerly our friend has become a cruel, cruel enemy.
The Structured:
All told we will be hosting nearly twenty one thousand participants in six separate events over a roughly one week period.
The support structures to make this happen, hopefully seamlessly, is where the real time is expended. Venue planning, in particular the Expo and the Post Race Party, are huge logistical endeavors involving hundreds of separate companies and thousands of individuals. The race itself with twenty some water stations, over forty forms of entertainment, coordination with medical, police, fire, National Guard, media and timing systems need to be kept in-synch. The mere change of the 5k start time from 7:30 to 7:15 am has implications that ripple throughout the system.
Even the smaller activities such as, the National Anthem Contest, Road Runner Mile, VIP Reception and sponsor golf outing require significant ‘hand-holding’ by volunteers and staff.
Unplanned but Predictable:
Not five minutes after the 15k cap was hit the frantic e-mails and phone calls began to hit. I think we did a good job either through transfers, waitlist, deferrals to get as many of the post-cap people in the race. What I did not gauge well was the volume of these calls/ e-mails and the demand on our small staff to handle them.
At this point I have to give a huge ‘atta-boy’ to Jim Stasaitis, the race director, who personally dealt with most of these issues.
Bonk on the Head:
Finally, I came home on Friday and saw a card sent wishing my wife and I a Happy Anniversary; I suddenly remembered that our Anniversary was on Saturday. The focus on that darn Boilermaker countdown clock I see every morning can blind one to other important things!